Shahida Bibi, a Pakistani Christian girl, was only 11 years old when her mother left her father for a Muslim man and handed over her daughter to her new husband’s brother.

“He basically kept her as a sex slave in his house. She was repeatedly abused,” Tehmina Arora, a human rights lawyer with the legal group Alliance Defending Freedom International (ADF International), told the Register.

When Bibi turned 18, she was forced to marry her abductor and convert to Islam. What happened to Bibi is sadly “quite common,” Arora said.

However, Bibi, unlike other victims, managed to escape.

Completely isolated for years, Bibi was not able to contact her father to help her get out of her situation. But last year, after 13 years of living with her abuser, she managed to leave his home along with her child, and return to her father, who then enlisted the help of ADF International lawyers to dissolve her sham marriage in court.

And in February of this year, a civil court in Bahawalpur, Pakistan, granted Bibi — now 25 years old — an annulment of her forced marriage along with identification papers stating that she is a Christian.

Bibi’s story shines a light on the vulnerability of Christian girls and women in Pakistan. To Western sensibilities, it seems inconceivable that a family would be helpless to prevent their child from being snatched from their own home while all of society behaves as if nothing is out of the ordinary. How can the forced marriage of girls and young women possibly happen? The answer, it seems, has much to do with how difficult it is to be a member of a religious minority in Pakistan.

Each year an estimated 1,000 girls from religious minorities in Pakistan — Christian, Hindu and Sikh — are abducted, and forced into marriage and conversion to Islam. Approximately 75% of these girls are younger than 18, and 18% are younger than 14, according to ADF International.

While the legal age for marriage in Pakistan is 16 to 18, depending on regional laws, under Sharia law marriage is permitted once the girl reaches puberty.

Arora, the human rights lawyer, explained to the Register how vulnerable girls and young women from religious minorities are routinely abducted, forcibly married, and converted to Islam, sometimes with the cooperation of their own family members.

The victims, she said, are often fearful for their own lives and those of their families, making them less likely to escape or report their captors to authorities. In some cases, the girls’ families are blackmailed — the mothers themselves are abused and threatened with the public release of video recordings of that abuse.

While it is not clear whether Bibi’s mother was threatened, Bibi went most unwillingly.

“She did not want to be with [her abductor], but there was no way to escape. Her mother had allowed her to be put in that position,” Arora told the Register.

In many other cases, however, the girls’ families reluctantly give up their daughters, induced by the hope of improving their standard of living.

“So you're trying to escape grinding poverty, you're trying to find a better life for yourself, you hope that somehow even this abusive relationship will protect you from all of that,” Arora said.

“The girls would talk about how they were promised a better life. They were told that they would be able to escape. And even sometimes [they are influenced by] the idea of becoming Muslim because they feel that it will be a better status in society,” the human rights lawyer explained.

Christians in Pakistan face discrimination, persecution and violence in the predominantly Muslim nation. According to the official census, there are 3.3 million Christians in Pakistan, making up just over 1% of the population. (The National Council of Churches in Pakistan, however, maintains that census “grossly undercounts” Christians.)

Many Christian girls do not attend government-run schools because access to subsidized education is limited, and many families are, in any case, reluctant to send their children to public schools. This lack of education leaves the girls vulnerable to being forced into marriage and conversion. In many cases, they are tricked into signing documents they cannot read.

To prevent further abuses, human rights advocates are pushing for a uniform age of marriage across the country. 

“No child should be married below the age of 18,” Arora said, a reform backed by leaders of religious minorities.

In 2024, the Catholic Church in Pakistan applauded the passage of an amendment to the Christian Marriage Act, which raised the age of marriage to 18. The legislation, however, applies only to Christians in the Islamabad Capital Territory, the district surrounding Pakistan’s capital.

“Often, when girls are abducted, they can easily be married, because they are taken somewhere where the marriageable age is 16, or sometimes the Muslims will say that they are already of marrying age. But we Christians say that they should not be married at all before the age of 18, because they are still children,” Bishop Samson Shukardin, president of the Pakistani Bishops’ Conference, told the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need.

“This will give us a little peace of mind — not full peace of mind, but some. At least in these situations we have grounds for opening a case against these people who have abducted and married under-18-year-olds,” he said.

Pakistan is not the only place in the world where Christian girls and young women are being abducted and forced in marriage and religious conversion. In 2014, the issue captured the world’s attention when armed Islamist militants from Boko Haram kidnapped 276 school children from Chibok secondary school in northern Nigeria. According to Amnesty International, 20 of the girls were forced to marry their captors, and 82 remain in captivity.

More than a decade later, attacks continue to be carried out on Christian girls and women in northern Nigeria, the Rev. Gideon Para-Mallam, an evangelical leader in Nigeria, told the Register. The foundation he heads, the Para-Mallam Peace Foundation, advocates for persecuted Christians and for conflict resolution between Christians and Muslims.

“The evil triumvirate of Boko Haram, bandits and armed Fulani herdsmen have elevated this into violent kidnappings of Christian girls and women through terrorist attacks in homes, churches, schools in towns, villages in minority communities and on the roads by stopping vehicles and profiling travelers,” Rev. Para-Mallam said.

“It is sad that victims of such abductions often face forced conversions and marriages. In the case of the evil triumvirate, victims are usually subjected to sexual slavery, physical and psychological abuse,” he said.

As in Pakistan, families of abducted girls often face threats and intimidation if they challenge such forced conversion and marriages.

“In some cases, the girls themselves are brainwashed and coerced into compliance,” Rev. Para-Mallam said. His organization is calling for a federal law criminalizing child abduction and forced marriage, enforcement of the minimum marriage age of 18, and better police enforcement of laws protecting young girls from kidnapping and forced marriage.

In Pakistan, as well, perpetrators act with impunity because the local police fail to take action, Arora told the Register.

“Very often when parents go and complain about girls getting kidnapped, the police will not assist them. They've not filed criminal complaints. Even if they file criminal complaints, they don't go looking for the girl,” she said.

In addition, in the event the case gets taken up by the court, the girls are threatened and intimidated while they are in the courtroom. Allowing the girls to testify in the judge’s chambers, rather than in the courtroom where they are afraid to speak freely, would help them in their efforts to free themselves from captivity.

“Often when these girls are asked to testify, they are doing so in a hostile court. The abductor is there, his family is there. There are threats — there's intimidation even outside the courtroom,” Arora said.

Advocates are also working to help girls who have been forcibly converted to Islam change their ID cards to correctly state they are Christian. It’s not simply a matter of principle — being officially declared a Muslim makes it difficult to escape one’s captor and return to one’s family.

“That caused hardship in Shahida's case. It’s really difficult to leave that husband because he's a Muslim man. You get handed back to your Muslim husband,” Arora said.

And if the victim has a job and works for a Muslim, having an ID card that says she is Muslim means she is unable to leave her place of employment.

Achieving these incremental reforms would help protect minority girls and young women in Pakistan, Arora said, although she acknowledges that the problem is deeply rooted.

According to Arora, the victims are often met with indifference in their interactions with police, in the court system, and even within child welfare agencies and women’s shelters.

“They are often counseled that, well, you've become a Muslim, and this is a good thing that has happened to you, and therefore, you should remain in the religion,” Arora explained.

“Which is why,” she added, “it creates a culture where this is tolerated.”